Gift for the gaffe

ELIZABETH BOWEN

Making Conversation Christine Longford (Faber 28s) Christine Longford's Making Conversation first came out in 1931. Anyone who was con- scious at that time must remember the splash this novel made, and the widening rip- ples—here came something not only endlessly funny but funny in a manner, and from an angle, not known before. Female purely comical writers were then rare (today, we have rather a 'school' of them, of all shapes and sizes) and this one brought fresh air to the literary scene. Moreover, although the anti-hero was already at large in the novels of Evelyn Waugh, his sister, or counterpart, had been missing. Lady Longford inaugurated the anti-heroine. Martha Freke, more than a prototype, was a winner. From the moment she opens her doomed lips, Making Conversation is under way.

Was the author accused of iconoclasm, with regard to the feminine image? Possibly, in some circles. It had been—and sometimes still is?—expected that women writers fly a flag for their sex, idealise women, anatomise their unmerited sufferings, or at least pro- mote them in the ethical market. Lady Longford, desabusee though friendly, could be seen as letting the side down. Herself in the best of spirits, with no chip on her shoulder or score to settle, she is from first to last in a sort of unholy complicity with Martha—whom she does not deplore, defend or attempt to justify. And Martha is not ad- mirable, to put it mildly.

As a schoolgirl, she is made noticeable by small eyes (it had been hoped they might grow, along with the rest of her person, but they did not) and the unswervingness of a piglike egotism. Lacking in charm, she is still more lacking in moral fibre. Would-be op- portunist, she invariably misses the catch. She is clever; alas, too clever by half—one cause of her many tangles with destiny. Of her constant vicissitudes, some are due to bad luck, but more to bad management: mortifying! When truth bores her, she em- broiders upon it freely: 'That evening Martha went into the draw- ing-room to say goodnight to Miss Pilk- ington, who asked her how she had enjoyed school.

"Not very much today, thank you." "Why not, dear?"

"Miss Spencer pulled my hair, and said I had committed adultery."

"Nonsense, dear, you must have misun- derstood her."

"I didn't."

"Don't contradict, dear," said her mother.'

Downfall, inevitable for such a character,

would have held more potential of tragedy had there been any great height from which to fall down. Sacked from her first school for constructive lying, the child moves ort, to another and more permissive one. While there, she incurs a round of applause by suc- cessfully going up for an Oxford scholarship: Springfield, that illustrious women's college. The triumph gratifies but does not surprise her. 'It was taken for granted that Martha would go to Oxford . . . For Martha it was a place where one finally proved how clever one was. Nothing could be more delightful.' But here, too, misun- derstandings pursue her: halfway through her second year she is sent down, on account of frivolity (wearing of large tulle hats) and supposed fornication in a Chiltern hotel.

Making Conversation, set back in time by its author (back, that is, from its original publication-date), would have had from the first a 'period' flavour. Opening in 1911, the story terminates some nine or ten years later, with Martha's disappearance in Czecho- slovakia. Thus, for 1931 readers, our anti- heroine had the additional fascination of being, in her own way, a period piece—product, maybe victim, of a vanished regime. How far did the pre-1914 set-up, its taboos, its lore and its aspirations, affect, or perhaps distort, this young person's character?

A formative influence, certainly, was her mother's drawing-room, in which, with the loyal assistance of paying guests, impeccable social standards were maintained—the more so because Major Freke, who had come to grief, and indeed worse, had to be lived down. Mrs Freke, fortified by Miss Pilk- ington, consistently did so, with flying col- ours. The child of the house, in consequence, had fine old outgoing Edwardian traditions dinned into her. These, given her opposite propensities, set up conflict.

The primary function of woman is what?—to pleAse. How?—by well-aimed, inexhaustible verbal liveliness. Conversation . . . Self-conscious, with a passion for show- ing off, Martha reacted fatally to this simple doctrine—which was, in the long run, to ruin her days. (And this gives the book its elo- quent title.) She tries hard, foo hard, in an inner sweat of anxiety. School playtimes, parties, university life, embryonic friendships, putative love affairs are made tense for her by an unequal struggle—not only to say something, to say something striking. Slowly, she recognised the truth: as soon as she opened her mouth, there had been a disaster. On the whole she gets on better with foreigners, as these only partially understand her.

Though her home, Hillview, is set in a rather sparse Somerset country neigh- bourhood, Martha's life, even prior to Oxford, is not devoid of intellectual contacts, thanks to an overspill from the vicarage. The vicar takes on more young men, of various nationalities, to coach than he is able to house, so inserts them as lodgers with Mrs Freke.

Hence the American Cecil—by Miss Pilkington designated a 'nasty' aesthete—also Harry, who when World War I breaks out goes to jail as an unregistered alien. These two egg Martha on to read Nietzsche. War brings to Hillview .a quota of other foreigners: refugees. Martha, non-patriotic, reacts to the war with apathy, some say callousness. Her main desire is that the thing should be over by the time she arrives in Ox- ford. It just is.

Immediately post-war Oxford is the glorious high point of this novel. Remember- ing Making Conversation, I had thought there was more of this—I regret there is not. What was to come to be known as the Golden Age excluded, unfortunately, studious young women. Great goings-on either were purely masculine, or were here or there joined by imported beauties. (How things have altered!) Forlorn, the inmates of Springfield and sister colleges made do, shar- ing some few, dim males, each others' dutiful brothers or loyal cousins. Martha combines with her cronies, Elizabeth and Helen, in at least one effort to crash the barrier: coated in face powder and adorned with millinery they approach the rooms of Mr Barrington- Ramsbotham, social don, at the infelicitous hour of two p.m. A scout on the landing warns them, there is a lunch-party.

'"Oh, but it's very urgent," said Elizabeth. "Will you tell him some students from Spr- ingfield want to see him at once."

Through the half-open door, they heard someone saying, "Oh, my God!" and it was Mr Barrington-Ramsbotham. As he came out, with a few crumbs on his waistcoat, there was a combined smell of incense, cigarette-smoke, coffee and brandy; and

behind him there was a dim, panelled room populated with young men.

"Please, Mr Ramsbotham," said Elizabeth in a childish voice, "we do so want to come to your Pindar lectures."

"Really? And what is there to stop you?- he asked in a tone that was sharper and less rich than usual.

"Miss Macdonald won't let us, and she wants us to do Thucydides instead."

"In that case," he said, "far be it from me to interfere with the discipline of your col- lege."

-But we do so want to come to your lec- tures."

He could not control a smirk There is further parley; however, the thing ends badly—Mr Barrington-Ramsbotham not only goes back but slams the door. 'That man is a toad,' says Helen, 'and I'm not going near his damned lectures.' What a lovely time men have compared with women,' laments Elizabeth.

Making Conversation consists largely of conversation : dialogue. There are few descriptive and no analytical passages. Lightness of structure, flickering sureness of touch, and an air of nonchalance make this supreme comedy writing, not yet bettered. And the matter is not less well found than the manner. Why, then, had this masterpiece virtually disappeared? The answer may be that Christine Longford suffered the fate of so many innovators—that of being snowed up, till lost to view, under hosts of adherents and imitators. A new genre having caused a sensation, brings about a change in the literary climate. Its progenitor may come to be overlooked.

Restored to daylight, does Making Con- versation seem in any way to have suffered from its long burial? In one sense, yes; though in that sense only. During the in- terim, going on forty years, topics and types which came newly to Lady Longford have turned into the stock-in-trade of accepted comedy. Paying guests, refugees, pukka sahibs,' tycoon, young men of peculiar bear- ing, dotty teachers, mystery monks make their rounds through humorous fiction like a stage army. One is weary of them. They mar, therefore, perceptibly though unfairly, such pages of hers as they take over. But damage confines itself to a small area. By contrast, the core of the book stands out in un- tarnished, triumphant originality. Making Conversation does not, and will never, 'date'.

The author's marriage to Edward Longford took her to Ireland, where the theatre claimed her. But Ireland had time to inspire two further novels: Country Places, which I riotously remember, and liggins of ligginstown, which I have yet to know. That these be republished in the near future, let us devoutly hope.